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November 2009 
Skip Holms’ Bear: Affordable WarbirdIf money were no object and you could afford a hangar full of airplanes, would one of them be a warbird, say a P-51 or an F4U Corsair? Probably. Just as likely, the airplane would sit in the hangar, kept airworthy by an expert mechanic, but rarely exercised. Why is that? It’s one of the natural laws of vintage aircraft ownership and also one of the reasons the airplane pictured above—the Bear 360—was designed and built. The Bear is, as far as we’re able to determine, a unique animal indeed: a newly manufactured military-feel aircraft built by a foreign industrial power, formerly a Cold War enemy. Eastern bloc imports like the L-39 and the Yak trainers have similar antecedents, but they aren’t new and they aren’t purpose-built to be high-performance fly-for-fun airplanes, which the Bear is. We stumbled upon this airplane at EAA AirVenture this year vaguely thinking we had seen it before (we had), but now the company that’s marketing the airplane is taking orders for U.S. deliveries. Interestingly, as new airplanes go, it’s not especially expensive and as warbirds go, it’s a mere pittance. At a distance, the Bear looks not unlike its namesake, the Grumman Bearcat, a late World War II Navy fighter that’s a relative rarity on the warbird circuit, compared to the P-51, at least. The design springs from famed air racer and combat pilot Skip Holm, who paired with Russian designer Sergey Yakovlev to build a modern, robust military-like aircraft, but with operational costs that don’t envision 60 GPH fuel burns and $100,000 engine overhauls. Garmin GTS 800 Traffic: TAS with Room to Grow Around 1997, BF Goodrich’s Skywatch TAS brought high-performance, active traffic interrogation to light aircraft. It was an accurate and reliable system that remains in the L-3 Avionics Systems product line today. Honeywell also has a proven TAS system and Avidyne’s affordable TAS600, which started life as the Ryan 9900 series, has been a lively seller and good performer. Now Garmin has a fresh TAS system of its own with the GTS800-series. It’s available in three versions: The low-cost GTS800, mid-range GTS820 and flagship GTS850. The attention getter is the ability to display ADS-B traffic targets on screen. Is ADS-B an important functionality for future TAS systems? We think so. Avidyne has announced an ADS-B upgrade for their brisk-selling TAS-600. The Garmin GTS800-series system is currently undergoing certification and availability is expected by year’s end. It’s engineered for sizeable growth potential as the FAA finalizes its ADS-B mandate. Cylinder Replacements: Lycoming, ECI Are Tops One perennial rite of passage for aircraft owners is what to do about cylinders at overhaul. Whether we’re talking about top-end work on a mid-time engine, or one well past its published TBO, which cylinders to install can be a major decision. And it’s not getting any easier. In fact, there’s an element of crisis in the cylinder business. Superior Air Parts was once a major supplier, but is gone from the scene. Continental and ECI have both suffered significant quality issues affecting thousands of cylinders. A recent AD impacts owners of existing Superior cylinders, rendering what was once the cream of the cylinder crop as one-run wonders. One way out of that morass, of course, is to buy a new or factory-rebuilt engine: you’ll get factory jugs. But given Continental’s troubles, that’s no panacea, either. For those facing top-end work or an overhaul, the choices are more complex. And they’ve gotten even harder in recent years given the aforementioned ADs and bulletins. Lycoming owners have it a bit easier: There are no recent ADs against factory cylinders or those supplied by Superior. But anyone with an aftermarket cylinder or flying a Continental engine is probably feeling a little paranoid about all this. After the last three years of ADs, what’s going on? Can’t anyone make a cylinder anymore? What do engine rebuilders recommend? And what should an owner do when it’s time to replace one or all of an engine’s jugs? Free Flight Planners: Fltplan.com, FreeFlight The first iterations of Fltplan.com had a clunky, Web 0.5 interface, but it was fast, flight plan filing was reliable and it sported a couple of unique features, such as seeing recently-assigned ATC routing between the airports. It quickly became a favorite of corporate flight departments and freight dogs. The user interface has improved (somewhat). While it still caters somewhat to the corporate flight world, we think Fltplan.com is the best all-in-one website to create and file a flight plan and grab FAA-legal weather. To really use the website, you’ll need to create a (free) login name, and appropriate aircraft and pilot profiles. This is a quick process where you can select from a long list of existing aircraft profiles or customize your own. With that done, you can either create a quick airport-to-airport plan or enter something with custom routing. Seeing recent ATC routes is a great plus, but if you’re traveling far you’ll likely see jet routes rather than Victor airways. Once you’ve built a quick plan, you can see headwind/tailwind factors and times at different altitudes. That data also appears in a nav log if you print one, so you can refigure times well if your planned altitude doesn’t work out in the real world. Additional slick features include tight integration with departure and approach charts, a Takeoff and Landing Data (TOLD) card, a system to fax the destination FBO directly and a well-organized weather page. Flight plans can also be saved in a format for upload into your G1000 or GNS 430. The site will also do flight tracking and offers some fee-based services such as eAPIS filings. Maintaining Your LSA : Few Lurking Land Mines Back when this whole LSA thing was being conceived, part of the appeal was simplicity: Two seats, fixed-pitch prop, a couple instruments ... what could go wrong? Actually, a lot can go wrong, break or just plumb wear out. So-called legacy LSAs can have over half a century on their airframes. Corrosion and fatigue mean just about anything can snap. For a Piper J-3, that’s no problem. You could literally build a J-3 from scratch with available replacement parts. For an Aeronca C-3, your options are limited. Flying a new light sport (S-LSA) doesn’t guarantee parts and support will be simple. Your experience will almost entirely depend on how the company built the aircraft, how well they prepared for maintenance and how long they stay in business. Old or new, the first step in protecting yourself is understanding why LSA maintenance is different and knowing what questions to ask before you buy. Supportability for legacy LSAs is primarily a numbers game. If enough airframes of a particular are model flying, then it’s probably worth someone’s trouble to supply parts. That’s what makes models like the Piper J-3 (Cub) and PA-11 (Cub Special), or the Aeronca 7AC (Champ) and 11AC (Chief) good picks. SVT Goes Downscale Garmin G500/G600 Datalink weather for the cheap seats—cheap being single-engine aircraft flying with sophisticated portable GPS—is arguably one of the top safety enhancements of the past five years. Running a close second (or even first for some buyers) are terrain warning features that despite their low cost, are capable of keeping you out of the weeds and towers. They’ll even yell at you, if you want. But compared to fanciful weather depiction, yellow and red terrain warnings with red Xs for towers are, frankly, boring. The evolving world of synthetic vision addresses that and now Garmin is making it available in all of its electronic flight display products, right down to the entry level G500, recently introduced at Oshkosh as an option for aircraft under 6000 pounds. Is it worth the add-on cost to a lower end system? We think that depends on your budget, but there’s no question SVT improves situational awareness and clarifies what can be an ambiguous two-dimensional display of the TAWS-type presentation. Used Aircraft Guide: Aviat Husky Utility airplanes occupy an interesting market niche. Like any other airplane, they take off and land, cruise at altitude, carry a payload and offer some creature comforts. Naturally, just about any spam-can does that and probably can do it faster, more economically and with more pampering of the pilot and passengers. But unlike most other airplanes, utility airplanes are optimized to use short, unimproved fields without drama or damage, carry lots, require little maintenance and be field-repairable, just a few of the features with which the typical tricycle-gear, all-metal single has trouble. Over the years, types like Piper’s Super Cub, the Maule series and the American Champion Scout have come to exemplify a utility airplane. All three were originally designed decades ago and have changed little since, fully depreciating their design and engineering costs. Too, there’s little "wrong" with these models: They ain’t broke, so they don’t need fixin’. Put another way, the basic piston-powered utility airplane is mature technology. Into this niche came the Aviat (formerly Christen) Husky, unapologetically designed with the Super Cub firmly in mind. The result is a Part 23-certificated, well-built and good-performing airplane successfully competing against its forebears. In fact, its success is all the more remarkable since it was designed and certificated in the 1980s, something of a dark age for new general aviation designs. Utility airplanes, of course, are put to many different uses, including romantic bush flying, plus more mundane pursuits like pipeline patrol, ranching and even training. By all accounts, the Aviat Husky tackles all these challenges with equal aplomb, making it worth consideration by anyone looking into buying a utility airplane. |
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